Spot the idiots

Football fans of a certain age will remember the weekly violence of the 70's and 80's. It was a time when it was difficult to attend football matches without encountering it personally, especially if you travelled to away games. It was a dark time when football fans with no interest in trouble were seen as fair game simply because they supported another team or came from another town or city. It drove crowds down over the years and depressed the game. I should also say that there was an added element of excitement and fear about going to games as a youth in those days because of it and that the trouble was largely minor in the sense of the consequences (arrests and injuries etc). I'm not condoning it but trying to put it into perspective and recognising what I experienced at the time.

As we know, it largely died off in the 90's as a result of improved policing and stewarding at games, police intelligence and the fear of early morning wake-up calls that would follow if you became known to the authorities. Jail sentences also helped. The trouble that did occur in the 90's was small scale and largely organised away from the stadiums by those who wanted to fight. Not a big problem as far as I was concerned. Most of those involved were banned from matches anyway and were tempting fate for a jail sentence.

In the last ten years we have seen the emergence of "youths" who have been mimicking their fathers and posturing at football. They looked hopelessly out-of-date and unmatched for the policing and technology of the 21st century. To be fair to them, they have largely, pciked up the mantle of seeking other youth firms and so the trouble has tended not to bother Joe Normal. However, the police and technology have slowly been decimating the youth as they have been jailed in high profile cases across the country.

In the circumstances, why on earth would you want to get involved in trouble in such a public way nowadays? Why would you run onto the field of play (an instant ban) just to jump around like a 12 year old? When you are a fat 40 plus who should know better like too many of those on the pitch at Upton park last night, you really are a sad case. So they will only be barred, but why would you do it? They were never going to get at Millwall fans, enclosed at the other end of the ground and surrounded by stewards and police. It was just showing off and the only people impressed were themselves.

As for the trouble outside the stadium last night, I suspect it was largely a throw-back to yesteryear and that it was the 40 plus brigade (and men in their 50's!) who still have a hatred for old rivals. The streets around all football grounds nowadays have extensive cameras and the police should have been prepared with their Hoolivans, the helicopters were certainly out. The fact that the trouble appears to have been so widespread and yet there were so few arrests, tells you that they were largely unprepared and did not have the manpower for arrests as they struggled to keep rival fans apart.

The police will now begin an extensive exercise to identify as many of those involved as possible and arrest them in dawn raids over the next 12 months. Any Millwall fans arrested as a result who can be shown to have arranged to travel without match tickets and who met fellow fans before going to West Ham will have little defence against conspiracy charges and disproportionately long sentences. The police will access mobile phone and text records and the hooligans will be bang to rights. Hopefully the first swoops will be before 19th December which might deter some of the even more stupid Millwall "fans" from venturing ticketless to the Valley.